Azam Khan’s apparition looms large over the Rampur Lok Sabha seat even as the veteran Samajwadi Party leader spends the polling day in a jail in Sitapur in eastern Uttar Pradesh. While the SP leadership says all is well within the Samajwadi family, it is cautiously preparing the Muslim-dominated constituency for a post-Azam era.
After a lot of rankling over the candidates in Rampur and the neighbouring Moradabad, in Maulana Mohibullah, the party has fielded a candidate who is diametrically opposite to Khan in his tone and tenor. He doesn’t belong to any camp, has the blessings of party veteran Shafiq Ur Rehman Barq who passed away recently and has successfully kept the campaign localised and low-pitched.
Local party leaders feel being a senior cleric (of Delhi’s Parliament Street mosque), Mr Mohibullah, a Turk, will get the support of the numerically less but socio-politically more influential Rohilla Pathans who have ruled the region through the Nawabs and Khan.
